Goldman Bankers Ditch Wall Street For Uber

Uber is stealing some top talent from Wall Street.

The latest to leave Wall Street for Uber are three Goldman Sachs bankers, who are joining the trend of former Wall Street veterans who left their jobs for the lure of sunny shores and flexible hours.

The exodus from Wall Street comes as the $51 billion unicorn gears up to file for an IPO, which could happen within 18 to 24 months, Reuters reported.

While the number of employees who have left Goldman to join Uber remains unclear, it is enough to have prompted the NYC-based company to reverse its policies and put its junior analysts and associates on a fast track to fancier titles. The company has even appointed a task force to retain its C-suite employees, which it risks losing to the fast-growing startups in Silicon Valley.

Goldman Sachs’ apprehension of losing its top dogs to startups is a situation that is increasingly becoming a reality for many Wall Street banks. Some of the recent prominent exits include Michael Evans, who worked as the vice chairman and head of Asia at Goldman and now is the president of eCommerce giant Alibaba. Ruth Porat left her CFO position at Morgan Stanley to take up a job at Alphabet.

The three employees leaving Goldman to join Uber are Ian Kleinfield, Prabir Adarkar and Chris Lapointe. They’re joining Goldman veteran Gautam Gupta, who works as Uber’s head of finance, and Corporate Development Head Cameron Poetzscher.

Even though employees often take a significant pay cut to leave their banking careers behind, the talent drift, driven by a need for a stable income and better work-life balance, continues. Evidently, Goldman is one of the top 10 companies Uber hires from.

The San Francisco, CA-based ride-hailing company had previously hired many Goldman employees to develop its surge pricing model and business tools, among other things.